The rebuilt remains of a Benedictine abbey on the island of lona keep watch over Columba’s island, which is only 3 miles wide by 1.5 miles long.

St. Ignatius of Loyola He was born on October 23, 1491 at the castle in Loyola in the municipality of Azpeitia, now in Spain. His baptismal name was Inigo Lopez de Loyola. He was brought up by the wife of a local blacksmith since his mother died soon after his birth. He became a servant (Page) in the house of the Treasurer of the Kingdom of Castle, who was a relative to him. In 1509 he joined the army of Viceroy of Navarre and participated in many battles without incurring any injuries to him. But one day he was injured seriously in his legs by a cannonball in a battle on May 20, 1521. During the treatment period he read De Vita Christi, a commentary on the life of Jesus and commentary on the Gospels. After reading this book, he started reading other books about Jesus and other saints. He got a mind change after reading Christian books and decided to devote his life to work for the conversion of non-Christians to Christian faith, in the Holy Land. After recovery from the leg injuries, he went to the Benedictine monastery, Santa Maria de Montserrat on March 25, 1523 and hung his military vestments before the image of the Holy Virgin Mary and went away. He then spent the next few months in a cave and practiced rigorous asceticism. He made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land for about 20 days and he studied in the University of Paris. In Paris he gathered six of his friends namely Francis Xavier, Alfonso Salmeron, Diego Laynez, Nicholas Bobadilla (all Spanish), Peter Faber (French) and Simao Rodriques (Portugal) and they took solemn vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience, on August 15, 1534 and about their life long work, in the crypt of the church of Our Lady of Martyrs at, Montmartre, Loyola. They founded the Society of Jesus in 1539. He wrote the constitution of the Society of Jesus and was approved by pope Paul-III on September 27, 1540. St. Ignatius and his friends pronounced their vows in the newly found Order (The Society of Jesus) on April 22, 1541 at the church of St. Paul outside the Walls. St. Ignatius became the first Superior General (Father-General) of the Society of Jesus. The Jesuit motto is \'Ad Maiorem Dei glorium\' (for the greater glory of God). St. Ignatius of Loyola died on July 31, 1556 in Rome due to malarial fever. He was beatified on July 27, 1609 by pope Paul-V and canonized by pope Gregory-XV on March 12, 1622.

St. Benedict He was born around the year 480 A.D. in a distinguished family of a Roman noble, in Umbria, Italy. He was a twin with his sister St. Scholastica. He studied in Rome and wanted to live a secluded life away from the busy city life, to avoid watching marching armies, sufferings of people. He left Rome with his aged nurse and settled down at Enfide, near the church of St. Peter. Later he met a monk Romanus of Subiaco, whose monastery was in the mountains. Romanus gave St. Benedict the habit of a monk. Benedict lived a life of a hermit for three years in a cave in the mountain. He became a very respectable monk and people used to gather around him for spiritual guidance. When the abbot of a nearby monastery died, the monks came to St. Benedict and requested him to take over the abbot of the monastery and Benedict gave consent reluctantly and became the abbot knowing well that the manners of the monks are different from his views. Benedict made many reforms in the monastery and introduced many reforms for the monks. The monks did not agree with the reforms of St. Benedict and tried to kill him by poisoning. Once the monks added poison in the drink given for St. Benedict but when St. Benedict prayed before drinking, the cup shattered. In another occasion the monks gave poisoned bread to him but when St. Benedict prayed before eating the bread, a bird called raven suddenly came in and took away the poisoned bread and miraculously saved the life of St. Benedict. Disgusted about the behavior of the monks, St. Benedict returned to his cave for hermit life and attracted by his sanctity many people came to him again for solace. He founded 12 monasteries in the vicinity of Subiaco and later founded the famous Benedictine Monastery of Monte Cassino, on the hill top between Rome and Naples. He died at the Monte Cassino Monastery due to high fever, on March 21, 547. He wrote the \'Rule of Benedict\' with 73 chapters about how to live a Christ-centric spiritual life and about how to run a monastery efficiently. He contributed more to the rise of monasticism and his rules are the fundamental document for many religious communities even today. #Benedict #Benedictine #monastery #spiritual #monk #Christian #cathol8c #rules #Constitution #cave

Guidelines for Living. June 25th, 2026 The Nagging Questions Atheism Doesn’t Answer In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. Psalm 102:25 Anselm was born in Italy in 1033. At the age of 23, he had a quarrel with his father, left home and began wandering through France. He ended up at the Benedictine abbey of Bec, which he entered and stayed in until he became abbot in 1078. Anselm is remembered for deducing that there are valid reasons for believing in God, all of which have evolved around the premise that God is the only explanation for man’s moral nature, the fact that design demands a designer in our world, and the cause and effect relationship of nature necessitates a master architect and a builder who, in the words of Scripture, is God. Since then, materialist and atheists have railed against Anselm’s arguments, but none have effectively refuted them, and that is one of the reasons why I am not an atheist. When he was president, Ronald Reagan spoke for a National Prayer Breakfast and said, “I have long been unable to understand the atheist in this world of so much beauty. And I’ve had an unholy desire to invite some atheists to a dinner and then serve the most fabulous gourmet dinner that has ever been concocted and, after dinner, ask them if they believe there was a cook.” The beauty, symmetry, order, and perfection of our earth is something which I cannot accept as chance any more than I can believe an explosion in a print shop could produce an unabridged dictionary. It is not only nature which keeps me in awe, but the more I know of the human body—the intricacies of the human body, including your brain, your nervous system, the network of veins and arteries that bring oxygen to your body, the dexterity of your hand, and the marvelous way your eye gives you vision—they all convince me that humankind came from the drawing board of heaven, and the architect and creator was the one of whom Moses wrote, “In the beginning, God created ….” (Genesis 1:1). Another reason that I am not an atheist is that only a belief in God and our responsibility to Him can really account for a belief in the dignity and value of a human being—whether it be an abandoned child in India or the son of the wealthiest man in your city. Apart from God and the recognition that we are accountable to Him, there is no real motive for morality or reason to treat each other with dignity and respect. As Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in The Brother’s Kamarazov, “If there is no God then anything is permissible.” Our concept of right and wrong, as opposed to the existentialist, “I’m OK; you’re OK; Do whatever seems good to you,” is all derived from the belief that God exists and that He has revealed Himself to humankind. Atheism offers no real standard of right or wrong, of truth or falsehood, and provides no answers to the deep questions of the heart. There’s another issue which demands that I believe in God, and that is the issue of existence. Now, Moses wrote that I was created in the image of God and I bear His image, His stamp is on me—which means I have a will, and choices to make, and, furthermore, I am responsible for what I do. A belief in God alone answers the centuries-old questions of existence: “Who am I? Where did I come from? Where do I go after I die?” A final thought. If there is a God, then whether or not I believe this is unimportant apart from the fact that I am denied an existence of what makes life worth living, what gives purpose to existence, and brings order to chaos. Resource reading: Psalm 90:1-17

This 1000-year-old manuscript was created by about 16 scribes in a Benedictine abbey in Trier, Germany. They used gold ink to copy the text of the Gospels onto parchment that had been dyed with a plant-based purple pigment. Now housed at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York

St. Ignatius of Loyola He was born on October 23, 1491 at the castle in Loyola in the municipality of Azpeitia, now in Spain. His baptismal name was Inigo Lopez de Loyola. He was brought up by the wife of a local blacksmith since his mother died soon after his birth. He became a servant (Page) in the house of the Treasurer of the Kingdom of Castle, who was a relative to him. In 1509 he joined the army of Viceroy of Navarre and participated in many battles without incurring any injuries to him. But one day he was injured seriously in his legs by a cannonball in a battle on May 20, 1521. During the treatment period he read De Vita Christi, a commentary on the life of Jesus and commentary on the Gospels. After reading this book, he started reading other books about Jesus and other saints. He got a mind change after reading Christian books and decided to devote his life to work for the conversion of non-Christians to Christian faith, in the Holy Land. After recovery from the leg injuries, he went to the Benedictine monastery, Santa Maria de Montserrat on March 25, 1523 and hung his military vestments before the image of the Holy Virgin Mary and went away. He then spent the next few months in a cave and practiced rigorous asceticism. He made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land for about 20 days and he studied in the University of Paris. In Paris he gathered six of his friends namely Francis Xavier, Alfonso Salmeron, Diego Laynez, Nicholas Bobadilla (all Spanish), Peter Faber (French) and Simao Rodriques (Portugal) and they took solemn vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience, on August 15, 1534 and about their life long work, in the crypt of the church of Our Lady of Martyrs at, Montmartre, Loyola. They founded the Society of Jesus in 1539. He wrote the constitution of the Society of Jesus and was approved by pope Paul-III on September 27, 1540. St. Ignatius and his friends pronounced their vows in the newly found Order (The Society of Jesus) on April 22, 1541 at the church of St. Paul outside the Walls. St. Ignatius became the first Superior General (Father-General) of the Society of Jesus. The Jesuit motto is \'Ad Maiorem Dei glorium\' (for the greater glory of God). St. Ignatius of Loyola died on July 31, 1556 in Rome due to malarial fever. He was beatified on July 27, 1609 by pope Paul-V and canonized by pope Gregory-XV on March 12, 1622. #Ignatius #loyola #jesuitinindia #soldiertosaint #eagerforholyspirit #Jesuitschools #Ignatiusteachingmethod #xaverites #xavierians

Thought for today in the form of a quote: In our efforts to do the right thing, we almost invariably encounter obstacles, sometimes steep and unexpected ones. Like you, I’d rather not find a scapegoat in the devil. But to blame myself for sabotaging my own efforts and for placing stumbling blocks in my own way could be a bit harsh. I want to stay alert to this possibility, but there seems to be a less self-accusatory understanding of what is happening. Life seems to always give us just the right task for learning what we need to learn. We might tackle a project thinking that this is now our task, but suddenly life confronts us with a different one. Learning patience might for instance be our real task at that stage in life; or learning even greater courage, or flexibility, or persistence, or all of these virtues. You are right: it is an inner task although I would call it a growth process rather than a battle. Our outer work is only the occasion for this inner learning. Progress will depend on asking again and again, “What is life’s lesson for me, today?” Written by - Brother David Steindl-Rast — author, scholar, and Benedictine monk — is beloved the world over for his enduring message about gratefulness as the true source of lasting happiness. Known to many as the “grandfather of gratitude,” Br. David has been a source of inspiration and spiritual friendship to countless leaders and luminaries around the world including Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Merton, and more. He has been one of the most important figures in the modern interfaith dialogue movement, and has taught with thought-leaders such as Eckhart Tolle, Jack Kornfield, and Roshi Joan Halifax. His wisdom has been featured in recent interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Krista Tippett, and Tami Simon and his TED talk has been viewed almost 10,000,000 times.